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The Mail and the Blue Riband


By Sune Christian Pedersen

On 16th April 1912 the following short notice was published in Nationaltidende [the National News]: "The Danish mail that went down with Titanic – 6,000 letters".


It was, of course, not only Danish letters that had sunk to the bottom of the sea during the night of 14th April. Easter mail from all Europe and from Asia and Africa were on board the Titanic; totally more than 7 million items of mail which were being sorted by five postal workers, three Americans and two Englishmen, in a large post office on board. The Titanic had the status of Royal Mail Steamer – hence the name R.M.S. Titanic.

Postal Privilege
The Titanic had got its share of the transatlantic mail through an agreement between its owners, the White Star Line, and the British postal service. At that time the Titanic’s postal privilege was worth 70,000 pounds a year and was surrounded by great prestige. From 1838, the privilege was transferred to the ship carrying the "Blue Riband of the Atlantic", a pennant that was granted to the ship that was able to cross the Atlantic Ocean in the shortest time. In this way the privilege became a driving force in the struggle for the blue riband – and, consequently, one of the most important driving forces in the race across the Atlantic among competing shipping companies in the 19th century. As the state-owned fleets were characterized by conservatism, development of the modern screw steamers was to a considerable extent left to private shipping companies. In this way conveyance of mail had a certain influence on the development of modern ship technology.

The Struggle for the Blue Riband
The Savannah made a sensation as the first steamer to cross the Atlantic in 1819 (most of the time, however, by wind power). It would take another 30 years before steamship traffic would yield a profit to the shipping lines – and even then, only to those who had the privilege. At first it went to the Cunard Lines, but in 1851 the Inman Lines set afloat the first screw steamer, City of Manchester, which immediately won the blue riband. During the next fifteen years the steamships made considerable progress: In 1856 97 % of all transatlantic liners were driven by sail, but in 1873 97 % were steam-powered!

A myth has it that the struggle for the blue riband was one of the reasons why the Titanic was lost. The ship is said to have sailed into icy waters at full speed in the attempt to break the record. This is, however, - a myth. The Titanic was not built to beat speed records, and it did not try to do so as in 1912 the honourable RMS was no longer being granted only to the fastest ships. It was not the mail that indirectly caused the ship to sink.


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